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Do Oregon women earn less than men for doing the same job? PolitiFact Oregon readers react

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State Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian's claim that Oregon women earn 79 cents for every dollar that men make doing the same job drew plenty of comments from Oregon PolitiFact readers. Today's roundup includes a sampling.
(The Oregonian)

Here’s the claim Avakian posted Jan. 31, 2014, on his campaign website: “In Oregon, women earn an average of 79 cents for every dollar that men earn for doing the same job. That’s just wrong.”

Similar claims have been made previously, including one that made its way into President Barack Obama’s 2014 State of the Union address. That claim, like Avakian’s, was rated Mostly True.

But we’ve had our say already, so it’s time to let readers have the last word when it comes to assertions of gender-based pay disparity in the workplace

Empirical Rationalist said varying factors will always lead to differences in how much men and women are paid, but called for new rules to make the process as fair as possible.

“To highlight the reality of the issue, I offer a few solutions:

1.) Affirmative Action type program for genders in the work place. All companies should have to hire 50/50 men and women. This means all women at the age of 18 must register with the Selective Service, and 50% of all combat soldiers must be female. This means all Victoria Secret outlets and Hooters restaurants must hire 50% men. All roofing, logging, and concrete companies must hire 50% women.

2.) Require that all jobs pay exactly the same. So the pay for pulling green-chain should be the same for daycare workers. The pay for being a forest fire fighter should be the same as someone who works in department store retail. The pay for working as a prison guard should be the same as a florist. Of course no body will show up for the harder and more dangerous jobs because the pay is the same.

3.) Eliminate all standards of equality and simply increase the pay requirements for women, to 120% that of male counterparts.

The reality is we are different. While equal pay for equal work is a great idea, much of the disparity in pay is due to factors that don't include discrimination by employers, but rather discrimination in the types of jobs men and women are willing to work.”

“This is all very simple. There is no gender inequality in pay and if there is one it is skewed toward females versus males.

The simple truth is,

A woman's work is never done but a man has a life sentence.

Women are not attracted to Beta low income males. They are attracted to high income Alpha males.

Males strive to work harder and make more to ensure they remain sexually attractive.

Despite all the equality talk if a married family with children is poor everyone thinks it is the husbands fault.”

Tenacious B, meanwhile, acknowledged such disparities in the past, but added those problems have now been addressed:

“There may have been a point a few decades ago where women were paid less than men for the same job, but no more. Also, studies such as this don't take into account women who return to the workforce after raising children. If a man was in the same job and presumably received yearly raises then yes he would be making more than the person who returns later.

Women also compromise the majority of college graduates now and are more supported K-12 than their male counterparts. What's the ratio of male to female teachers again?”

babcock was having none of Avakian’s argument and had a few words for us, as well:

“Complete garbage. You have to compare for the same jobs. It's not gender discrimination, pay differences are usually due to circumstantial issues. A nurse at a large urban hospital is going to get paid differently than a nurse at a small rural hospital.

How about the Oregonian tell us whether female reports at the paper make less than male reporters?”

“"women earn an average of 79 cents for every dollar that men earn for doing the same job. That’s just wrong.”

I'd say your Truth-O-Meter was way too generous on this one. If you're going to compare on a dollar to dollar basis, it has to be based on pay per hour, not weekly or annual hours, to eliminate the effects of full-time vs part-time, and also OT. The only explanation I can offer up for a differential in hourly rate for the exact same job would be on the basis of seniority, or length of service. For example, in the last Boeing contract the company was proposing that it require 16 years to reach top scale in a particular position vs. 6 years in the old contract. How many women are going to have that many years uninterrupted?

If Avakian is aware of another basis for the disparity, he should be prosecuting for discrimination.

If we're talking about wage disparity without the "equal work" qualifier, I'm sure that there are statistics out there that show African-American and Hispanic males earning less than white females on average.

Also, it should be unnecessary to point out that there are still jobs that are traditionally male and female, the latter of which generally pay less.”

Thirty-five years ago, I was one of 22 named plaintiffs in a class actions suit against the Oregon State Board of Higher Education on behalf of all female faculty members in the state higher ed system (Penk, et al v Oregon State Board of Higher Education). Among the complaints: equal pay for equal work.

We lost then and it appears we are still losing the battle, nearly four decades later.”

"Nothing has shown that any gap is solely because of workplace discrimination, Hegewisch said. But studies controlling for factors such as level of education, hours worked and sector of work still leave 25 to 40 percent of the gap explainable only by discrimination, Hegewisch said.

"There are shades and important nuances here," she said. "It’s not based on taking two people literally in the same firm and saying, ‘Are you being paid more or not?’ It’s also who gets hired at all. It’s still the case that the highest-paying firms tend to hire more young white guys than young anybody else."

Different pay for different work also plays a part, Hegewisch said. Laborers, who tend to be men, usually make more than, say, nursing aides, who tend to be women, she said. "It comes down to more of a social issue of how we judge the value of different occupations."

None of this says "same job." Her statements are nuanced and malleable; Mr. Avakian's are absolute. The problem is, Mr. Mapes, this Politifact column is going to be used as fodder for a campaign to regulate wages in the state once the "Equal Rights Act" is put on the ballot by initiative and passes because people will not understand that equal rights are already and specifically guaranteed in the Oregon Constitution.

This things are all likely to happen and it will be a nightmare of bureaucratic overreach.

And I maintain it still stands that Mr. Avakian's statement is Mostly False.”

The careful reader will note that barttels briefly mistook us for Oregonian political writer Jeff Mapes. Barttels quickly apologized for the mix-up, to which we said we’ll take being mistaken for Mr. Mapes any day.

We’re guessing there is still a lot more to say about an issue that affects every working adult in the state. Put your two cents in – or your 79 cents, depending on your perspective – and we’ll share it later this afternoon.